


A Body Without Organs

by Hervillier, TerraBeth



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, Psychological Mastication, Will and Hannibal dancing round each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:33:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hervillier/pseuds/Hervillier, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerraBeth/pseuds/TerraBeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A WIP exploring Will and Hannibal's dynamic. The authors are trading off chapters, so expect some stylistic fluidity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hervillier's chapter. A tense therapy session.

The key was always to make eye contact just long enough for the other person to acknowledge, or at least half-consciously sense, the gesture. Then you could look away, for a few brief moments of relief. In those moments your tongue loosened, your thoughts limbered up. 

When the other person had started talking again, you would wait a few seconds, then look up and hold contact. You would wonder if they noticed how painful it was for you, if they were offended by the obvious effort involved. But usually they would just keep talking. 

There would sometimes be a hint of discomfort on their part if your gaze was too intense, too focused. But it wasn't because you were listening closely. It was because you were holding a pose, like a headstand. Straining your whole body to keep it still. 

Then when it was your turn to talk, you would hold their eyes for a few brief torturous seconds while your tongue started tripping and stumbling. Then you could look away. Catch your breath. 

Sometimes after a particularly sustained effort on your part, you could get  _them_  to look away. That was always a small triumph.

When your body holds a difficult pose over and over, it becomes easier, more natural, eventually. 

Will was certain that this matter of making eye contact never would get easier. It wasn't that it was important in itself,  but that others expected it, even needed it. He felt their need for it, and it bothered him. There were plenty of other, more important things to bother him, and he was angry at himself that this took up so much of his mental space.

Hannibal didn't need it. He didn't appear to need anything, really. But particularly the rituals of small talk, the rituals of hands and gazes, that who knows what goddamned australopithecus had invented. The man could certainly do it though. He could do it very well.

Within the first few minutes of his first real conversation with Hannibal, the man had eased them into a gentle choreography, as sure and as knowing as touch. When the doctor was talking, he would fix his gaze somewhere near the second row of books on the wall to Will's left, as if addressing him only indirectly. When Will was talking (addressing his own hands, or the light fixture) the doctor would look directly at him, but never from simple obligation or even from curiosity. Just because he somehow knew when Will could tolerate being looked at.

It was absurd. Will was trying to tell him about a dream, but all he could think about was how the man always flicked his eyes away, almost demurely, just before Will could meet them. As if he were being sized up by some woman at a party. And somehow, at some point, he realized he was  _trying_  to make eye contact, that he was literally pursuing the man's gaze across the room, as if they were two skittish sparrows.

Was the doctor doing this on purpose? Any hint of purposeful "therapy" made his hackles rise, still. A reflex. Did he do everything on purpose, or did he proceed by instinct? Will had imagined, at the outset, a monstrous sort of mind that would be conscious of every one of its own movements and abilities, that would have no blind spots to itself, that had mastered itself. One that could locate, within its own immense compass, the coordinates and the potentialities of the minds of others, understanding them because they were already contained within his. 

Impossible, absurd, but an interesting idea to play with.

His mind wandered further. What is Hannibal like when he is sick, with the flu? How does he act when he is in love, if he has ever been? What would frighten him?

"I'm going to be honest with you," said Will. "I mean the kind of honesty where you don't filter anything out, not just the kind where you don't lie. For example we've been talking long enough that sometimes, naturally, I'm going to dream about you, though not so much  _about_  you as ----"

"Naturally," the doctor said.  _Natshrrly._ Was that a smile?

Will wondered if the doctor could tell the difference between being sincere, pretending to be sincere, and that volatile mixture of the two that Will was attempting now. Will had wrestled the night before with the problem of whether it was better for the doctor to believe that Will felt some kind of dark, mysterious, helpless attraction toward him, and if so, whether it was better for him to believe that Will was fully conscious of it, or not. Maybe something in between conscious and unconscious -- a dream. That would be the perfect device. That's how he would do it.

_How transparent am I?_  he thought. If even Hannibal -- well, there had been moments, strange moments, where he had thought that the doctor had betrayed something inadvertently, had been unaware of how legible he had suddenly become. Did he know that Will knew? Did he want him to know? In the past Will had idly fidgeted with questions like these, but now so much more depended on it. 

The key was to disguise his suspicions about Hannibal, but to disguise them so well that the disguise became real. And then to see how far he could get with that. It might take a long time. It had already taken a long time, and Will was no longer sure how truthful even his truths were. The dream was real. He had really had it. But if he wasn't careful, his attitude, his whole posture, would be wrong. Guilty.

"I dreamed," Will continued, "that you and I were sitting facing each other at a table, a grimy little plastic table. You looked like you do now, except your eyes were …."   _No, that was too much. No overseasoning or oversaucing. Don't forget how sensitive his palette is._  "…..a bit different, I can't say how. You told me it was time for my Accession."

"Was I a servant? A functionary? Were you a king-to-be?" 

"No. You had already been ….. accessioned. A long time before."

"So. I'm not carrying your robe-train. Instead I'm a harmless bronze to be warehoused until further notice." He seemed sincerely amused.

Will continued: "I'm really not sure what "accession" meant in the dream. But you and I were unique. In a special lineage. You would walk me through my accession, and I would do it for someone else, one day. Someone carefully chosen." He stopped, looking at his hands. Just long enough to telegraph that he was overcome by some deep and ambiguous emotion. He felt Hannibal's eyes on him. Don't look up, he thought. The eyes are the windows of the soul. Especially mine, he added bitterly.

It was best for the doctor to believe that Will was infatuated with him and didn't yet realize it. This is what he had decided, this was his design. A person in love is easily read, especially when he is trying to hide it. A person in love is the most legible, candid thing in the world. He needed Hannibal to think he was just that. A lamb trembling under wolf's clothing. It was going to be very, very difficult.

"There were certain things I had to do. Mental disciplines. And I had to file all my teeth. Yours were already filed, to uniform points. Like Ota Benga."  _Too much, too much._ Just because it's in the dream doesn't mean you have to say it, he admonished himself. Lecter interprets dreams like Victorians bleed you with leeches. Will had seen a print in his office of an old diagram, showing the best points for bloodletting. Actually, it was probably an original. Anyway, thought Will, the man knows me very well now, I have to admit that, and he can extrapolate volumes from the barest bones. Stick to bare bones, let him worry about extracting the marrow.

"You told me that two hours before my Accession, I would start to feel the changes in my body. It would feel at first like I had food poisoning, or a bad hangover. That's when I would start preparing. There was a kind of scaffolding, and I'd be tied hand and foot to it. I was deeply excited. Aroused. This was where my whole life had been heading to, what I was on this earth to do. The change would completely destroy me, and by doing so exalt me beyond all imagining. Something would course through me …" 

Will stopped. He had been speaking too quickly. He hadn't been paying attention to his tone, to where his hands and eyes were. He didn't look up, but he heard the doctor shift slowly in his seat. The sound terrified him suddenly -- the kind of irrational terror one so often feels in dreams.  _He knows_ , his mind said. But knows what? he rejoined, almost cheerfully. If anything, I was too convincing. Right now he thinks I'm being utterly sincere. So let's push it just a little bit more, and then jump back and pretend to disavow everything. I should act embarrassed, I should probably blush if I can.

" … and I would be like you," he said. "With you." Neutral expression. Long pause. Hold it. Hold it.

Will sat back suddenly, recrossed his legs, and smiled. "Of course it's like a lot of other dreams I've had, ones I've told you about. One interesting and kind of funny thing about it was that in the dream, you told me that afterward I should expect reports on the news of strange flash floods all over the country, tornadoes and floods. I swear to you I woke up and had to piss like a goddamn …. well, you can see where all this is going."  _This is the disavowal,_ he said to himself.Pretend you don't want him to notice how deeply you felt what you were saying. Here, be as obvious as you want. Change the subject awkwardly, stand up and start pacing, start cracking jokes, anything.

Will stood up and immediately tripped over the clawed foot of the easy chair he'd been sitting on. He caught himself gracefully enough. 

But at that moment he looked up, and he met the gaze of Hannibal. It was strange. He couldn't look away. The man looked weirdly strained around the eyes and mouth. As if he had winced, and just stayed in that pose. Holding it. Will looked around. Had he scuffed the chair, the carpet? Knocked something over? Nothing.

Hannibal said: "Will, you are just as intelligent as you think you are, which is saying a great deal. Though a bit flat-footed, a bit clumsy at times, as we can both see. Likewise I am grateful that you have never  _over_ -estimated me." Yes, that was a smile. Broad, clear, like a sunny day. Not a single hint of irony.

"I find your dream  _absolutely_  fascinating," he continued. "Unfortunately, it is now ten minutes after 5 o'clock, and I have already stolen ten more minutes of your time than we agreed. Please forgive me."

They stood and shook hands, like friends. Will did not need to look at his watch. It was 4:30. If he hurried, he could get to the bank before it closed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A crime scene investigation.

It’s almost unbearably predictable, and Hannibal dislikes that in himself, but it simply can’t be denied: the good doctor is not a morning person. He loves the peace of evenings – a darker, more ruminant peace than the morning-time brings. Mornings beckon, but evenings  _seduce_ , with the scent of cigars and leather armchairs and the  _glug-glug_  of Cabernet being poured. And he loves his eight hours of sleep every night - no more, and definitely no less, or there are unpleasant consequences. “Unless it is an emergency, please do not call between the hours of 2 - 10AM,” reads a prominent line at the bottom of his business cards, in the cursive, listing script of a 16th century Florentine aristocrat.

But today the morning beckoned with a greater urgency than usual, if a 5AM phone call from Jack Crawford could be said to “beckon” rather than “demand.” In this very particular case, however, Hannibal was happy to oblige. He was eager to see Will Graham  _see._

At the crime scene, the air smelled of damp trees, grass and earth. The gravel beneath Hannibal’s calf leather loafers crunched as he walked to the train tracks. A photographer and two police officers were hovering over the body between the twin irons.

It was a very young man - a boy, really. No more than eighteen, and stark naked. His arms and legs were splayed outwards, hooked at the elbows and knees, like a swastika; his ankles twisted in ways ankles were never intended to twist. His eyes, muddied with burst capillaries, stared up unseeingly at the sky. The purple-yellow ghosts of his murderer’s hands still hugged his neck in a ring.

Hannibal looked up. Will Graham was standing on the trestle thirty feet overhead, looking down at the corpse. He was leaning forward, gripping the low guardrail in both hands, hard.

“Not nearly as theatrical as some of your more recent cases,” Hannibal said as he walked up to join him. He set his hands on the guardrail, mirroring the other man’s posture.

“You sound almost disappointed,” Will replied, grimacing.

“Not at all.” Hannibal continued to eye the body underneath the bridge. “Only wondering if this really is the work of an  _evil mind_.” He suffused the words with an undercurrent of mockery, one that he knew would amuse Will, soften him.

“It bears some similarities to a recent spate of murders in industrial towns,” Will explained, still not exactly softened. “Teenage boys. Drifters and hustlers, mostly. Jack thinks the killer moves along the train tracks.”

“And what do you think, Will?”

“I don’t know what I think.  _Yet_.”

“Everyone clear the scene!” Jack Crawford was bellowing like a bull, his voice echoing down the tracks, underneath the bridge.

“May I stay?” Hannibal inquired.

“No,” Will said, almost scoffed.

“I do understand,” Hannibal said, inclining his head politely. “It’s a vulnerable state, isn’t it? Complete empathy. Allowing another person to…come into you.”  

Then Will finally looked at him.  _Stared_  at him. With full eye contact.

Hannibal held his gaze.  _Taking up the gauntlet, are we, Will?_  he thought, and felt a pleasurable squirming somewhere deep inside of him.

“Everyone, move it!” Jack bellowed again, sending several police skittering away. Then, upwards to Lecter, with much more deference, he asked, “Dr. Lecter, would you mind giving Will a moment?”

“No, Jack,” Will said, and cleared his throat. “It’s all right. He can stay.”

Jack raised his eyebrows at this, but walked away without further question.

Hannibal looked at Will, let the other man’s image sink into him. He was breathing in and out through his nose, deeply, meditatively. He did this for a good twenty seconds.

Then he closed his eyes.

Yes, it was as Hannibal had suspected. Whatever Will did when he was in this raw, vibrating-nerve state, it was not something one learned through practice.

He lectured to his students, he told them what he did, but did any of them learn how to see like he saw? Hannibal doubted it. At best, they learned to imitate it, to whittle it into series of investigative principles they would then crudely apply to future cases. They found Will Graham fascinating. Their evaluations were filled with praise. But it was the praise of pilgrims to a holy site, of someone who has witnessed something he will never be able to explain, even to himself.

There was something anachronistic about Will’s gift. In another place, another time, he might have been a shaman. A saint. A sacrifice.

Will’s eyes snapped open. “This was no design,” he declared, sounding startled.

“He intended for the body to be seen,” Hannibal said. A gentle contradiction. “Why else would he fling it onto the tracks?”

“He didn’t want it to be  _seen_ ,” Will said. “He wanted it to be  _pulverized_. A train was supposed to come, but didn’t. There was…there must have been some obstruction on the tracks. The thunderstorm last night, it knocked a tree over, somewhere down the line. He –” He gestured towards the body. “He was supposed to be  _pulp_.”

“Why would he want to destroy him so completely?”

Will blew out his breath, quickly. “He was angry. He was…uh, he was mortified. The boy didn’t understand how much he appreciated him, how much more he deserved to touch him than anyone else, than those vulgar girls at school, those…” On the verge of a slur, Will bit his lip. “He rejected him. He rejected his gift.”

“What gift was that?”

“Of…someone finally  _see_ ing how beautiful he is,” Will said. “ _Was_ ,” he corrected, with a little ruefulness.

“The killer,” he continued. “He’ll be someone who knew him, someone who saw him on a regular basis. An older man - not that much older. Someone at his church, or a teacher at his school.” Will plucked his glasses from his face and rubbed at his eyes. “He’ll be easy to catch. Local enforcement will handle it fine. We can pack up and go. Make it back to the academy in time for lunch.” He reset his glasses over the bridge of his nose.

“You sound almost flippant."

“Well, I’m not,” Will said. “I’m the opposite.” He looked up at the sky, and blinked. His eyes were slick.

Hannibal waited.

“You don’t understand,” Will whispered, shaking his head. “He was such a beautiful boy.”

“Can you empathize with the victim as well as the killer?” A sudden sword-swipe of a question.

Will parried. “Now  _that_  has historically proven to be a horrible idea,” he said, already backing away.

“Why?”

Will grinned like a death’s head. “Oh, you’re a smart man, doctor. I’m sure you don’t need me to explain.”

“Why not try it?” Hannibal suggested. His voice was velvet. “I’ll be right here.”

Will looked at him.

Hannibal waited.

His mouth tight, Will edged side to side for a moment. Then he closed his eyes again. A few seconds later, his feet lifted off the ground. Not very far, only an inch or so. But there it was, a gap between earth and shoe, a place where gravity seemed to be temporarily suspended. It was impossible, absurd. But it was no illusion.

Hannibal felt a stirring in his loins. Oh, this  _was_  something new.

Will’s body, still suspended, pitched back and forth slightly - like a set of clothes hanging on the line, swaying in a breeze. Then he suddenly tipped forward, head-first, towards the ground thirty feet below.

Quick as anything, Hannibal reached out and grasped him by the back of his collar, like a bitch grasping her whelp by the scuff of its neck.

Eyes wide, gasping, Will stumbled backwards, fighting for a foothold on the bridge. He fought for air, inhaling and exhaling, again and again. 

His eyes, stricken, darted to Hannibal.

“It’s all right, Will,” Hannibal said, still holding him upright by the coat. “I’ve got you.”

“Did I –” Will stopped, and started again. “Did I lose time?”

“Only for a few seconds.” Hannibal regarded him intently. “Tell me what you saw. Tell me now.”

“The boy. He didn’t…he didn’t mean to laugh at him,” Will stammered. “He was just…he was frightened. The killer’s so much bigger than him, you see. But he wouldn’t have dismissed him, wouldn’t have laughed. He just didn’t  _know_. He didn’t know what to do.”

Will closed his eyes, exhausted. “Forensics will find trace evidence. Saliva. Semen. Tears.” His voice dropped. “He had sex with him after he died.”

There was a pause.

“The way you describe it makes it sound almost tragic,” Hannibal said.

“It  _is_  tragic,” Will blurted. He was barely, just barely trembling. His eyes were elsewhere.

Hannibal set his hand on Will’s neck. He could feel the other man’s artery fluttering under his palm, as if it had a life of its own, as if it were a fretful, frightened thing. His hand looked uncouth, almost brutal, in spite of its carefully manicured nails. Was it because it was against Will’s neck? It was so thin, so delicate in comparison.

Hannibal unfurled his thumb and drew it horizontally across Will’s larynx, barely tracing the skin. Will shivered.

“Everything all right up there?” Jack yelled from the ground.

“I believe we’re fine, Jack,” Hannibal answered, dropping his hand. “Will was lightheaded for a short moment.”

“Tell him it’s not his serial,” Will said, too quietly for Jack to hear.

“What?”

“He says it’s not your serial,” Hannibal related.

Jack Crawford ducked his head down again, and let loose a string of muted expletives.

“Will you be all right?” Hannibal asked.

“Oh, I always am,” Will said, with an heavy dose of dark humor, as he backed away from the edge again. His gait was still unsteady.

Hannibal pinched Will at the elbow and guided him, gently, away from the bridge, back towards the road. He pulled down the the police tape so that he could more easily step over it.

“It’s really quite astounding, Will, your gift,” he said, as though it were almost an afterthought. “Much more than I expected.”

“What were you expecting?” Will’s voice was bitter. His eyes were in the trees.

“I don’t know,” Hannibal said, truthfully. “But it wasn’t this.”

For a few seconds the only sound was the leaves crackling under their feet.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” Hannibal said, when they had almost rejoined the others, because it was time for the disavowal now. Something making light of the intimacy they’d just shared. Something that would echo in Will’s brain as he lay awake in bed all night.

Will glanced at him sideways, and Hannibal said: “The new aftershave is a decided improvement.”

Will laughed - a nervous, self-conscious laugh, one that reminded Hannibal of a clenched fist rattling di.

“I thought you'd never notice,” he said. His smile had too many teeth in it.

Lying didn’t come easily to Will Graham, Hannibal thought. He was an inherently honest person. But he had his own way of hiding the truth. He hid it in the last place anyone would expect to find it. He hid the truth underneath the truth.


End file.
